 Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd
Director: Amy Heckerling
Year Of Release: 1995
Plot: Based on Jane Austen’s Emma, Cher is a spoiled Beverly Hills princess, who loves nothing more than shopping, but decides to better herself by helping new girl Tai to be less of a schlub and get a suitable boyfriend. However Tai soon realises she may have created a monster, and also thinks she’d like a boyfriend of her own. |
Next week could mark a major milestone for women directors, with many expecting Kathryn Bigelow to walk off with the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker, making her the first woman to pick up the award (and only the fourth to be nominated). However female directors are still very much the exception rather than the rule, and those that are around, often find it more difficult to get films off the ground than their male counterparts. For example Amy Heckerling had a string of successes including Fast Times At Ridgemont High, European Vacation, Look Who’s Talking and Clueless (see, there is a link to Clueless here, even if only a slightly tangential one) but since 1995 she’s only managed to get two movies made (with a third, Vamps, on the way).
Just think about it. How many films do you own that were directed by a women? Not many I bet. Hollywood is still very much a boys’ club, and while there have been attempts to bring more equality to film, few industries are still as male dominated as the movies.
Although there have been some major landmarks for women in film, such as Amy Pascal becoming Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures, and Stacey Snider becoming Chief Executive of Dreamworks, these mask the fact that Hollywood is still pretty much an all male club. For example, there’s been no real increase in the percentage of movies being directed by women since the 1960s (it still runs at around 4-6% - and before that there were virtually none).
So what’s gone wrong? Could it be that women either don’t want to or aren’t as good at making popular movies as men? At a first glance, you might believe this was true. If you look at the list of directors ranked by how much money their movies have grossed in the US, women don’t just make a bad showing, they’re virtually non-existent. The top woman is ranked number 58 on the list, and to be honest you’d be forgiven for never having heard of her, even though Nancy Meyers directed What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday and the recent It’s Complicated. While Nora Ephron (Sleepless In Seattle), Penny Marshall (Big) and Amy Hecklering (Clueless) also make the top 100, it’s still a pretty pathetic showing, especially when you consider that the top woman ever’s films have grossed $547 million, while the top man, Steven Spielberg, is up at $3.6 billion.
Even increasing the list to the top 200 only adds a few more names, Anne Fletcher (The Proposal), Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight – which is the highest grossing movie ever directed by a woman), and Martha Coolidge (Out To Sea). Best Director Nominee Kathryn Bigelow is down at number 211. To give a rather extreme example, since his conviction for child molestation, Victor Salva’s (Powder, Jeepers Creepers) films that have grossed more than all but eight female directors’ movies have. That would seem to suggest you’ve got a better chance of getting ahead in Hollywood of trying to make a kiddie porn video than you do if you’re a woman.
The truth is, Hollywood is geared far more towards allowing talented men to flourish than it is for women. One of the main reasons for this can be found by looking back to the 1960s and 1970s. At the end of the 60s cinema was in trouble, the old boys club who ran Hollywood (and I really mean OLD boys club, as Jack Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers was still at the studio until 1967, Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount, was still Chairman Emeritus of that organisation, while Darryl F. Zanuck didn’t step down as Chairman of 20th Century Fox until 1971, having run the company since 20th Century and Fox merged in 1935), suddenly found that the old studio template didn’t sell enough tickets anymore. Columbia was nearly bankrupt, Universal could only pay the bills through its television production arm, while the once mighty MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian in 1969 more because he saw the value of its LA real estate rather than its worth as a moviemaking operation.
While the rest of the world was looking towards further integration for women in the workplace, the old men in Hollywood did what they’d always done, and looked for other men to create a new template for successful movies. It’s also true that at this stage, filmmaking was still not seen as a career for women, so while there were film schools popping up all over America, the attendees were predominantly men (many of whom had more interest in skipping the Vietnam draft than becoming filmmakers). The result was that the new wave of filmmakers who created the ‘New Hollywood’ in the 70s, such as Francis Ford Copolla and Martin Scorsese, were all men, as were the architects of the modern blockbuster, such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, a few years later.
However it wasn’t so much the people as the type of films they were making that made it far more difficult for women to become successful in Hollywood. The film industry was desperate and looked to this young generation of men to make movies that would appeal to modern audiences, and as a result they made movies that would appeal to themselves – that is, they made films for other young men. This, more than anything else, completely changed the face of Hollywood.
Whereas the old model had been to make movies that individually may have skewed more to female or male viewers, overall they were designed for mass audiences encompassing both genders and all age ranges. As fewer and fewer people went to the cinema during the 60s and early 70s, films started to become more and more targeted at certain groups, and the biggest success Hollywood had was with a young male audience.
It’s also true that because filmmaking is such an expensive and uncertain industry, executives tend to be terrified of anything new and different. The result is that if you are a woman wanting to make films, you can expect to spend much more time proving yourself before Hollywood let’s you near a decent budget than you would if you were a man. However, if you’re a male director and your first big budget movies doesn’t perform stellar box office, there’s a decent chance you’ll be given another shot if you showed promise. For a woman, you’re more likely never to be allowed to make another movie again.
Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow |
Just take current toast of the town Kathryn Bigelow, who built a solid reputation with the low budget vampire flick Near Dark and the thriller Blue Steel, before scoring a breakout hit with 1991’s Point Break. She was poised to become the world’s sole, major female action director. From Point Break she went on to make the ambitious and fascinating Strange Days, at the time the most expensive film ever directed by a woman.
Despite showing serious directorial flair, the movie didn’t become a hit, and as a result, she didn’t direct another Hollywood movie for seven years. And when that film, 2002’s K-19: The Widowmaker (which at $100 million is still the most expensive movie ever directed by a woman) didn’t break the bank, she once again had to go on Hollywood hiatus and didn’t make another movie until The Hurt Locker, which was independently financed outside the studio system and cost a relatively paltry $11 million to make.
There’s another side of this all-male entertainment world, which is that even movies designed for a predominantly female audience, are often creatively controlled by men. Just look at The Hours. On the surface this couldn’t have been a more female driven movie, with three major movie actresses (Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore) playing characters from different eras, all dealing with issues brought on partly by their status within society as women. However, the movie was directed by a man, had a screenplay written by a man and was based on a novel by a man. Even all six of the producers were men.
Nor is this unusual. If you look at a list of the top romantic comedies, most were written and directed by men. Indeed many of the most successful achieved that distinction because they’re actually movies filled with male-driven ideas, dressed up as chick flicks. Take Pretty Woman for example, which initially just appears as a modern take on the fantasy of becoming a princess. Very female skewing. However it’s about a prostitute, and the film is predominantly told from Richard Gere’s perspective rather than Julia Roberts’. Despite its surface female focus, it is just as much, if not more, a man’s wish fulfilment fantasy, as it is a woman’s – it’s a film about a man getting to have a lady in public and a whore in the sack.
However there’s one thing Hollywood really needs to note when looking at the list of top grossing rom-coms, and that’s the two that lead the list. While directed by a man (Joel Zwick), My Greek Fat Greek Wedding was written by and starred Nia Vardalos, while What Women Want was co-written by a woman and had a female director (Nancy Meyers). In recent years there’s been a big increase in the number of successful rom-coms with female writers or directors, such as Anne Fletcher directing The Proposal and 27 Dresses, and Aline Brosh McKenna writing The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses. What this would seem to suggest is that women (and indeed men), are very receptive to movies made for women, by women, but Hollywood isn’t giving it to them (although read my article on 27 Dresses to see why Hollywood is funnelling women into making rom coms).
The result of all this is that women have a tough job getting into the movie biz (particularly in influential roles), films designed for women are still creatively controlled by men, actresses are marginalised into playing stock characters, and overall the female audience is seen as less important than the male one. This is despite evidence showing that when given the chance, women are more than adept at making successful movies, and the likes of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and What Women Want show that audiences might actually respond better to female skewing entertainment where women have major creative input. It’s also true that just like the young male audience Hollywood craves, a predominantly female audience can make a film a hit. To paraphrase Field Of Dreams, if you make movies for them, they will come. Just look at Sex And The City: The Movie, where groups of women even had themed parties based around going to the cinema to see film.
Yet despite all these difficulties, there are still plenty of women banging on Hollywood’s door, and some are being allowed in, whether it’s Sophia Copolla’s increasing profile as a top-flight director or Mamma Mia! being helmed by the woman who directed it in theatres, Phyllida Lloyd. Hollywood may only be making baby steps towards equality for women both in the business and in the audience, but hopefully given enough pressure, things will change. If Kathryn Bigelow wins the Oscar next week, it’s unlikely to set off a cascade that’ll suddenly brings equality to Hollywood, bit it’ll hopefully be a big chip into the wall that is the Tinsel Town old boys club.
(Box Office data and rankings courtesy of BoxOfficeMojo.com)
TIM ISAAC
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